Away from the Cairns Crocodiles conference centre, the breakout venue of choice has to be the port-side Hemingways Brewery. And while it may have only been lunchtime on Day One, the crowd was already raucous and the beverages flowing ahead of the first session on Unlocking AI’s real impact on revenue and efficiency.
And who better to helm the panel than Lucio Ribeiro, who just yesterday was unveiled as TBWA Australia’s newly minted Chief AI and Innovation Officer. Ribeiro, whose enthusiasm could be bottled and sold, was even good enough to chat to B&T before the mics were turned on.
“My move to TBWA reflects how excited I am about the promise of AI as an enabler of creativity. In the past, big creative projects were often limited by high production costs. Sometimes the best ideas would not get off the ground because they were considered too hard or costly to execute,” he said.
But now, Ribeiro says, with AI advancing rapidly and overheads coming down, the sky is the limit: “AI in the hands of some of the industry’s most creative minds is a truly exciting combination.”
Having got his juices flowing, Ribeiro welcomed a crack panel to the stage, comprised of Marcus Byrne, head of art & AI at Thinkerbell, Natalie Harvey, CEO at Mamamia and Marie-Céline Merret Wirström, head of creative technology and AI at Made This.
Harvey, the only panelist lacking ‘AI’ in her job title, it was noted, has nonetheless been an enthusiastic adopter of the technology in her role at the women’s publishing powerhouse.
“As a leader, I’ve been really hands-on with the adoption of AI at Mamamia, and I think that rubs off on the team. One of the biggest things we’ve had to do from the start is alleviate fear – there’s a real fear around AI replacing jobs – especially at a publisher.
“But I’d advise people who haven’t properly engaged yet to give it a red-hot go. People are already moving from Google to ChatGPT to search, for example, so businesses need to be ready to embrace it or risk being left behind,” Harvey said.
Aside from the need to keep up with competitors, another excellent reason for brands to board the AI train is the bottom line.
“If we’re discussing the value of the technology, I’d point to a few recent projects we’ve completed where we’ve leveraged AI. Across two to three projects we’ve seen up to 60% cost efficiencies achieved, compared to doing things via traditional methodology. These projects also took roughly 50% of the time,” Merret Wirström said.
Circling back to the need to promote the technology, there was broad agreement that the AI function should not sit with just one person in an organisation, but with many. Furthermore, the consensus was that there is a need to accentuate AI’s positive influence within businesses.
“I’ll give an interesting example. My niece in Ireland, who’s 12, saw a creative AI platform in action and was dismayed. She said to her mum, ‘Why bother drawing, when it’ll never be that good?’ But my son, also 12, and a budding artist, saw something similar and said ‘Wow, this is going to animate my drawings and make them even better’. And that sort of sums up the two schools of thought right now. And I really hope more people are seeing it through the latter perspective,” Byrne said.
It’s a view that would no doubt please Ribeiro, who is surely as compelling an evangelist for the technology as you’ll find anywhere in Cairns this week.
Reporting by guest reporter Richie Kenzie, Australian Lead at Bud.
